White House

The party of family values:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) - A onetime top attorney to former President George W. Bush is accused of trying to kill his wife at their Connecticut home by beating her with a flashlight and choking her.

Fifty-seven-year-old John Michael Farren is charged with strangulation and attempted murder. He was ordered held Thursday on $2 million bail.

His lawyer Eugene Riccio calls it "a tragic situation."

Farren was deputy White House counsel to Bush. He also worked on the campaign and transition for former President George H.W. Bush.

Here’s why the White House will go after Howard Dean but not the actual people who are derailing health care reform:

People wondering why the White House does tough, public pushback against Howard Dean but not against the likes of Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman ought to take a deep breath and consider that Nelson and Lieberman . . . get votes in the United States Senate.

The White House hasn’t publicly attacked Bernie Sanders or Roland Burris over there Dean-esque doubts any more than they’ve publicly denounced Nelson or Lieberman. That’s because the White House doesn’t want to get into a downward spiral of recriminations with any of the 62 Senators who they’re hoping will vote for the bill.

As Aravosis puts it “In other words, they'll respect you when they fear you”. Truer words never spoken.

Look at what they are doing to poor Helen!

I just love how the press is so outraged by this story.

NPR:

"The Salahis' testimony is important to explain how a couple circumvented layers of security at the White House on the evening of a state dinner without causing alarm," Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee chairman, said in a statement released by his committee last night. "If the Salahis are absent from tomorrow's hearing, the committee is prepared to move forward with subpoenas to compel their appearance."

Subpoena? Please. What Thompson should do is simply revoke the invitation of the Salahis to testify, then they will show up….er “crash” the hearing.

Image via Wikipedia

Last month the White House, under the direct instructions of President Obama, scrapped the old, expensive system the White House’s website ran on and moved towards the freely available open source platform Drupal, which also powers this site. In a Drupal meet up in D.C. last night, the White House tech team broke their silence on the move:

The biggest news from the night was a few announcements about the White House's plans for engaging with open source development communities. Dave Cole, the White House Deputy Director for Technology, said that the White House New Media team has been working with the White House legal council to figure out how to participate and contribute code back into the Drupal community. They can't promise a timeline for when that'll happen since it's pretty unprecedented for the Executive Branch to be participating in an open source project and to be directly engaging the Drupal community.

They also want to start holding "Development Challenges" for the international Drupal community in order to help figure out some ways to take the best ideas that are already out there, and see how they can be used for the public good.

This is very welcoming news. Open source software is the future of computing, and now that the United States government is so openly embracing it and willing to contribute back, it will only get better.

When I first posted the news about the White House’s move to my favorite content management system I also said that it will provide a great tool to allow more user interactivity, and that appears to be exactly what the White House has in mind:

They have about a list of at least 60 feature requests for the project, but the number one issue is user account management and figuring out a user authentication system. This issue happens to have a lot of privacy implications, and it's not just matter of the technological implementation of user account management, but they're also considering the social media best practices of single sign-on and OpenID. They have to thinking about dealing with the range of users from skeptical to technologically immersive users.

Another feature is a way to save a search, and then send out e-mail alerts whenever new information appears containing that keyword search.

Imagine that. If you are interested in executive orders then you will be able to create an email alert about “executive orders” and get an email anytime one is added to the website. This is like Google Alerts, only on the White House. It will provide an extremely valuable tool for the media and blogosphere, as well as normal citizens.

During the entire White House/Fox News feud FOX decided to bolster about their “soaring ratings”. This meme was then picked up by a lot of talking heads in the mainstream media. Media Matters decided to go to the data and see exactly what “soar” meant to FOX:

No matter how many times reporters and pundits made the claim, a detailed analysis of Nielsen ratings numbers clearly indicates that in the two weeks after the White House in mid-October sparked a media controversy by claiming Rupert Murdoch's channel was not a legitimate news organization, Fox News' ratings did not soar or go "through the roof." In fact, not only did Fox News' overall ratings not soar, they experienced no significant increase at all. Instead, in the two weeks following the initial verbal jousts with the White House, Fox News' total day ratings virtually flatlined.

And since a picture is worth a thousand words (and something that most FOX viewers are only able to comprehend), here’s a nice graph:

Soar or spiked seems like a very big over-exaggeration. I doubt you can even call that a bump. Instead FOX really gained nothing from the war.

I just got done reading this article on Slate, which argues that whitehouse.gov moving to Drupal is a “political disaster waiting to happen”. Let me take some time to address each of these lies.

Drupal knows best. It's not that Drupal thinks you're evil. It just thinks you're ignorant. In a basic setup, the software is suspicious of everything you try to do. Should you, say, go completely rogue and try to add some Javascript in the body of a page—a 14-year-old technology that controls interactive components like buttons—the platform will have none of it. The message: "That's dangerous stuff, and you probably don't know what you're doing." Better to outlaw something altogether, Drupal figures, than simply ask you if you really want to use it. If Drupal ran the Food and Drug Administration, it would ban high-fructose corn syrup. This is just the sort of straitjacketed paternalism that half the country is convinced the Democrats are hell-bent on imposing on us all.

Javascript is dangerous stuff. Ever try putting it in on Wordpress? You can’t. That’s not the case with Drupal, and it exemplifies that the author of this article has no idea what he is talking about.

XSS, that acronym for “cross-site scripting” is a huge security risk, accounting for 80% of all vulnerabilities in 2007. For example, when you login to a Drupal site there are cookies stored on your computer. Those cookies are what lets Drupal know that you are that logged in user. By placing a simple line of javascript inside of content posted on a Drupal site that allowed it, I could easily have your session cookie sent to some server I run and then put that cookie into my browser and now I am logged in as you and you would never know I got it. This isn’t limited to Drupal, but to any system that allows logging in.

So does that mean I can’t use Javascript in Drupal? Absolutely not. Let’s look at the code to embed a CNN video:

Know what that is? It’s Javascript and you can see that exact video on this site by clicking here.

Wow that must be some kind of voodoo, but it isn’t. It didn’t even require any programming. It was a simple option inside of Drupal where I can change my “input format” to allow it. Not only that but I can limit what users can enter Javascript and not (try doing this on something like Wordpress – you need a plugin or to code it yourself). That’s the power of Drupal, and the piece of mind any website owner can have with it.

Let’s move on

Following up on yesterday’s news of the White House now using the open source content management software Drupal to power their site I decided I needed to expand on it a bit more for my less tech savvy readers.

First an explanation of open source software is in order before an understanding of what it means to the citizens and taxpayers of our country.

The open source model is very powerful and starting to dominate the computing world. Approximately 75% of the websites on the internet are powered by software developed as open source. Apache is the most popular web server software and is open source. Linux is the most popular operating system for servers and is open source. Even MySQL, the database which powers most sites including Google is open source.

Open source software can be freely obtained. Any of the examples I gave above you can go and download right now and even download the underlying code that makes the software run. You are free to modify it however you like, given you follow the very lenient licensing requirements, and run those changes openly.

Making this software free doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made. Drupal is a perfect example of this. The software is so powerful and robust that it ends up with a very steep learning curve. That’s not by design, but rather because of what the software has to offer.

The home page of 1600 Pennsylvania avenue did a relaunch over the weekend. The most exciting part is that its now running on Drupal, the same software that powers IntoxiNation and Crooksandliars. 

The day after Obama was inaugurated as our 44th President I did a post about having a more tech savvy commander in chief, and in it talked about how the government should really embrace and move towards open source software like Drupal. It’s great to see that they are doing this.

Given the extensibility of Drupal and existing modules that can provide anything from a full social network site to a major campaign site, including email letters, I say we can expect to see a much more user oriented whitehouse.gov.

Saturday night Wanda Sykes hosted the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. During her presentation she made a joke about Rush Limbaugh. In case you missed it, here it is:

When I heard that I knew there would instantly be outrage from the right, and they didn’t disappoint. Just for a little taste of the anger we can see in the coming days just take a look at Reliable Sources yesterday:

Now that the week is kicking back into full gear we can expect to hear increased screams of anger from the right. I can only imagine what Limbaugh will say today.

But how far off base was she?

At a time when this country is revealing in aspirations of better times for our nation and after leaving a period where we had a White House with an approval rating dipping below Nixonian levels, Rush Limbaugh decided to come out and say that he hoped this new period in our nation’s history would be a failure. Not only that, he also declared that was the opinion of all Republicans, and if a Republican disagreed with him they had to crawl back to him groveling and begging his superior forgiveness. Kiss the ring of your king GOP!

But let’s also think about some of the comments made from people like Limbaugh, Coulter, O’Reilly and a slew of other right wing talking heads. On an almost daily basis one of these people say something far worse than Sykes said, and then when they get called out they try a defense of “well I was just being funny”. Of course none of these people are comedians, unlike Wanda Sykes.

So if you on the right can’t handle jokes being launched in your direction, then you need to look into new careers out of the spotlight. If the right circles the wagons around Rush Limbaugh yet again, then we must also ask ourselves if the Right has enshrined a leader with such a level of worship and protection, that we can safely call Rush Limbaugh the Kim Jong-il of the GOP.

This week Obama tells lobbyists and special interest groups that he is ready to fight when it comes to the budget.

Following up on my post about Andy Card demanding Obama “respect the Oval Office” and where a suit jacket at all times, I have no found this picture via HuffPo:

Maybe Andy should have spent time making the same demands of his former boss, instead of running out to get him cheeseburgers. But Bush isn’t the only one to break the “golden Card rule”. Look at all the former presidents who have done the same thing – including Reagan. Now how dare Andy Card go out there and publicly blast the The Gipper. I certainly hope the Republican circles prepare the firing squad for such an act of GOP treason.

We got wingnut Ed Morrissey trying to explain it out, in typical wingnut fashion:

Outlook isn’t exactly “archaic”.  Many organizations use Outlook to handle e-mail, scheduling, and other tasks.  It’s not my favorite program, but it works, especially for large organizations.  Or at least large organizations that know what they’re doing.

The article Morrissey is referring to says it’s an Outlook server that is causing the problems. Well there actually isn’t “Outlook servers”. Most likely they are running off of an Exchange server, which are still nightmares to manage and keep running.

But this whole part:

Outlook isn’t exactly “archaic”. 

really got me going. So if they were running say Outlook 8 bundled with Exchange Server 5.5, that wouldn’t be archaic? I guess Ed never heard of versioning, because that example right there would be nearly 12 years old. That’s many lifetimes over in the world of computers and internet applications. Think of someone telling you their are up to date technology wise because they run Windows, then when you look at their computer they are still running Windows 3.1. Or how about “hey I’m a big gamer. I got a Nintendo!”. You might think they mean a WII or DS, but instead you find they have an original Nintendo from the 80’s!

Day 4 of being President and the media is already crying foul:

A growing media frustration with Barack Obama’s team spilled into the open at Thursday’s briefing, with reporters accusing the White House of stifling access to his oath re-do and giving Obama’s first interview as president to a multi-million dollar inauguration sponsor.

Veteran CBS newsman Bill Plante was one of the most vocal critics, questioning the White House’s handling of Wednesday night’s second swearing in – which was covered by just a four-reporter print pool that didn’t include a news photographer or TV correspondent.

I guess the days of openness in government we had with Bush have come to an end.  </snark>

UPDATE:

And as I posted this, David Gregory popped up on Morning Joe to say how the Obama White House was trying to model the Bush White House when it comes to dealing with the media. Does that mean the Obama White House will try and prosecute journalists for doing their job? Yeah – I doubt that. I guess the media has forgotten about the Obama campaign. They were one of the most structured and disciplined teams in the history of politics. It’s a safe bet that the same will carry over into the White House.

True I got a feeling the media is still growling over the fact the White House has a blog. Ewww those dirty little pajama wearing, latte sipping, basement dwellers. How dare they!

Those are the words of Bill Burton, Obama’s spokeman, upon entering the White House.  Hopefully that is more change we can see coming.